Big Increase for Container-Traffic Forecast for 2010
Cargo-container traffic at the nation’s ports is expected to be up a sizeable 25 percent during the first six months of this year compared with last year.
According to Port Tracker, a monthly newsletter published by the National Retail Federation, the prediction assumes we are not in a double-dip recession—which means we go in, out and back into a recession—and that a recovery is underway.
“This is a dramatic turnaround over what we’ve seen during the past two years,” said Jonathan Gold, NRF vice president for supply chain and customs policy. “Increases in import volumes don’t correspond directly with dollar volumes in sales, so caution has to be exercised when looking at these numbers. But retailers are clearly expecting to move more merchandise this year.”
Last year was one of the worst years for container traffic since 2003. In 2009, 12.7 million 20-foot containers passed through the nation’s major ports, down 17 percent from 2008’s 15.2 million containers and the lowest volume since 2003’s 12.5 million containers.
At the Port of Los Angeles, traffic last year was down 14 percent to 6.75 million cargo containers. Activity dipped even more at the Port of Long Beach, where container traffic plummeted 20 percent to 5 million containers.—Deborah Belgum
